Update - CineForm Adobe CS4/CS5 Support

[Don Blish]

Originally Posted by David Taylor

.... Adobe was very late releasing its 3rd-party SDK to integrators for CS4, ...... we have confirmed that the bug is fixed in CS5.
........ Immediately begin work on CS5 .

So for me, the question is whether using the CS5 SDK means your real time engine and/or render engine will finally use the Cuda/Quadro GPU. For the same dollars I can add 192 RISC cores in an Nvidia Quadro or I can add 2cores/4floating point units going from an i7 quad to a hexacore.

...and thanks for keeping us posted.

[David Newman]

Our CS5 efforts are/will be designed work with Adobe's acceleration options.

[Jake Segraves]

Charles, for my personal use, over the last year or so I have used a combination of CS3 and CS4. For more layer/effects intensive projects or projects where I needed HD-SDI support, I have gone with CS3 using Prospect's RT engine. For more simple cuts-only type work, I've used CS4...mostly because I felt obliged and excited to be using the "latest and greatest". Now, CS5 is supposed to be a game changer (of course you will need a beefier machine). I will most likely NOT be using CS4 and CS5 simultaneously because it won't be necessary. As the original poster said, the problems CineForm engineers were having with the CS4 SDK have been resolved in the CS5 SDK. That means CineForm will work much better in CS5. When its released I will likely be using CS5 exclusively. This is coming from me, the editor...not me, the cineform support manager.

[Ray Parkes]

Things like "automated actor replacement" and "all virtual camera moves" and "any background you want or can imagine".

And we'll all moan about how easy it used to be in the old days of CS3-4-5 ... but how "2D" it all was![/QUOTE]

2d simulated 3d is no big deal to work in if your used to 3D. Most of these tasks are not that hard. Replacing backgrounds, camera tracking and replacing an actor with an avatar is a run of the mill task but its almost impossible to do acurately if you can't check your work in real time.

I have discovered that CS4 renders work well in CS3. Why bother to upgrade at all?

[Stephen Armour]

Ask me that same question 2 years from today, Ray. I bet it will seem a bit...how should I say...pointless then? I would surely bet money on that.

In the same way we are doing today what cost a great deal to do just 5 years ago, the logarithmic curve of advances in these areas will assure the continuation of that scenario. It's not linear. At some point in this mad race, some grow tired of it's relentless nature and try to sit on the fence. The winds of change either blow you into the path of constant advance, or blow you away.

[Jim Snow]

David, Your straightforward way of describing and dealing with product issues is very much appreciated. Your company is a model of the way a software company should be.

[Sergio Sanchez]

David:

I think an apology is not enough, promises are not enough... You need to at least provide a temporary solution to the problem. Most of us use the plug-in to edit, and there is not need for a codec if we cant do it in real time, if we cant view the motion in our footage at full speed then what is the case in using Cineform when we can do it better with proxies, its a pain in the ass but believe me you loose a lot less time editing with proxies than rendering the footage every time you need to check if your cuts are right, and editing and rendering over and over again to review edits because you cant play them back... Thats terrible, I´ve lost a lot of hair the last months, spent a lot of money replacing destroyed keyboards, and thinking I should have used proxies instead of using cineform for a Professional project.

We need to play back our footage at true fps, i´ve been thinking a way to do it because I cant change the software now that I´m on the middle of a Project, and going back to CS3 would be a suicide, I think that a quick fix would be the ability to select in the active metadata tool the resolution of the footage at 1/4 or 1/8 for editing, and when your are done change it back to full for rendering, something I can do on First Light but I can´t in Premiere (draft quality doesnt work). That way I can edit in real time (or close) and dont loose precious time and money when editing.

Believe me, that would work for most of us, it´s not great but at least it´s much better than what we´ve got.

Please give us something, or I will be bald by the end of the month and I will blame you for the rest of my life.

[Stephen Armour]

"David:

I think an apology is not enough, promises are not enough... You need to at least provide a temporary solution to the problem. Most of us use the plug-in to edit, and there is not need for a codec if we cant do it in real time,"

Sergio, your logic on this is faulty on several points: 1st off, the previous statement is simply not true. You ALWAYS need a codec of some kind to edit, and most of them would not let you edit with them in "real time". Cineform (in actually one of their less important areas) DOES allow you to edit in realtime, but with previous versions of Adobe Premiere at the moment. Remember, it was ADOBE that threw a curve to them (and many other plugin manufacturers) with CS4. It would very much have been to their benefit if they could have had Adobe's cooperation in helping fixing Adobe's stupidities and they gained nothing by losing disgruntled CS4 users from what wasn't even their own fault.

" if we cant view the motion in our footage at full speed then what is the case in using Cineform when we can do it better with proxies, its a pain in the ass but believe me you loose a lot less time editing with proxies than rendering the footage every time you need to check if your cuts are right, and editing and rendering over and over again to review edits because you cant play them back..."

Many of us would beg to differ with your conclusions on the previous statement and find that unless your are using a 1999 computer for editing, the difference in time spend rendering is merely inconvenient, not a case of going back to proxies! Maybe you need some hardware upgrades before placing all the blame on your editing codec!

"Thats terrible, I´ve lost a lot of hair the last months, spent a lot of money replacing destroyed keyboards, and thinking I should have used proxies instead of using cineform for a Professional project."

The true cost benefit for many of us using Cineform is certainly not just in substituting some uncompressed final output for their codec, but in multi-generational trips through post-production with very little degradation. That, my complaining friend, is not resolved by using proxies!

"We need to play back our footage at true fps, i´ve been thinking a way to do it because I cant change the software now that I´m on the middle of a Project, and going back to CS3 would be a suicide,"

Again, I state: maybe you need to upgrade your setup! We play back quite nicely at full quality, and that is with quite modest equipment...with Cineform. Yes, we do have to render somethings, but believe me, using CS3 is not suicide. It is still a quite valid and powerful editing experience.

"I think that a quick fix would be the ability to select in the active metadata tool the resolution of the footage at 1/4 or 1/8 for editing, and when your are done change it back to full for rendering, something I can do on First Light but I can´t in Premiere (draft quality doesnt work). That way I can edit in real time (or close) and dont loose precious time and money when editing.

Believe me, that would work for most of us, it´s not great but at least it´s much better than what we´ve got."

I believe Adobe's options for editing plugins (replacing Adobe's, with their own run-time engine) were somewhat crippled in CS4, which no outside company would benefit from, and has caused Adobe no end of confusion and problems. Hence Adobe's extremely rapid fasttrack development of CS5. Lay the blame where it mostly is, at Adobe's feet for getting greedy and somewhat stupid. CF's promises were based on trust that Adobe wouldn't shoot itself in the foot, something that unfortunately they DID do, so CF bled from Adobe's self-inflicted wound.

Is CF lily white? Probably not...too many development irons maybe, but what would you do if the product you depended on tried to cut you out of their picture? Getting mad does no one any good. If you want proxies, go use something with proxies. I certainly don't and the cost benefit of CF still very much outweights it's shortcomings...at least for those of us still happily using it in realtime with CS3 and yet also suffering with it a bit in CS4.

Call the shots right, don't just shoot from the hip.

[Mike Harvey]

...the difference in time spend rendering is merely inconvenient...

Actually, in the case of the project I'm working on, it's turning into a real pain the rear-end...

...BUT...

...you are absolutely correct. Cineform's promises have always had a big red flashing asterisk at the end of them, and that asterisk has been just as soon as Adobe worked out their own bugs, as those bugs have been what the hold up has been for Cineform. They have always been open and up front about that. Adobe's unwillingness to repair those bugs... and now flat out refusal to repair them... are to blame. That Cineform is giving all of you Prospect owners a free upgrade is no small chunk of change out of their pockets.

Seriously, it's a bit like yelling at your mechanic for your car not working, when the car itself is fundamentally designed with serious flaws in it. The mechanic can only work with what he's given.

[Sergio Sanchez]

Stephen:
I just bought a Core i7 and 12gigs of ram and it doesnt play in real time I have four workstation with dual processors, i´ve had to pay USD3,000 a week for a month to a very good editor who couldnt finish the edit because we couldn´t play back the footage in real time, I couldnt spend more time and money changing to proxies wich would´ve been better for editing than what I had, I dont care if I have to change to an uncompressed format in post production since post houses prefer to work with image sequences, and color correctors with DPX, I have to use cineform because I shot with a SI2k camera.

Maybe most of your statements are right when you are editing weddings, music videos and even commercials, and you have to do everything in house, but when you are doing long complicated projects like a feature film, and you have to work with various postproduction providers, the workflow just doesnt work, Editing has to do with motion, if you can play back your footage right and you dont have the ability to find you edit points very fast, you loose a lot of money...Ask any real editor and you´ll find that answer. The guy who came to edit, did a film a year ago in Argentina, most of it was shot with a SI2K so the codec was cineform, after a couple of weeks of pain they decided to re-encode everything to ProRes and edit offline. I couldnt do it because I only had a month so we suffered, and didnt finish... so you´ll have to imagine how pissed I am after spending 20,000, in an unfinished job... We changed the workstation and the problems persisted every 30 seconds the playback stops, It doesnt matter the amount of memory or the processor, or even the OS... So dont blame the computer, I´ve tried in four different systems, very powerful, In one I have SCRATCH V5 installed and I do color correction of 4K R3D footage.

I do couple of commercials a month and even on 30sec projects clients are asking us to deliver proxies because they can work faster, then I have to transform the cineform files to DPX for color correction and effects, and deliver the final in QT Uncompressed because it is what most master facilities can playback. So In the real world I only use Cineform Files to archive, as masters.

I´ve used CS3 for a couple of years and It worked, I started using cineform four years ago so I know pretty well all the pros and cons, I designed workflows for various projects in Latin America shot with digital cameras. When I say I cant go back to CS3 because I´m in the middle of a big project, and I´m shure you know that you cant change a horse in the middle of the race.So I´m stuck with CS4 and I have to deliver the final cut on a couple of weeks and I´m late because of jerky playback.

I think the idea of putting a quarter or hexlet resolution for playback in active metadata, like the settings you can use on SI2K camera to free memory and CPU resourses, could help a lot, I´ve already spent some more money on a fast rig, and It´s not helping, I cant play back a whole scene in premiere so I have to render view the scene in media player and go back to adjust the cuts, timming, etc...

Dont treat me like a stupid, Stephen, I´ve been doing post production for 10years in various facilities... I now very well what I´m doing, And what I´m talking about.

[Stephen Armour]

Sergio, I can feel your pain. You got caught in the middle and it hurts that way. Laying out editor bucks when the software is not up to par is enough to grind your teeth down.

We do not do weddings or commercials, but our 5 person team is not being paid 3 grand a week per person. The current project we are doing is several years long and targeted for at least 23 languages, and we started it out doing it bilingually. So we're not really doing little stuff either. I am the main editor (a real one) and director, and have many years experience. Sorry for your pain and $$ losses. I know exactly how that feels.

The difference for us is still having most of our workstations here using CS3 and only a single CS4 ws for testing and non-essential output. If I was in your shoes, I'd be mad and just as frustrated. Since you have fast systems there, why didn't you output your CF'ed material back out as uncompressed AVI's and edit it that way? Because it's even slower, right?

Your lower res idea would work through FL, but I have no idea what they'd run into with CS4 engine replacement changes, as it's already been a nightmare. That's a question for the designers.

Sorry if you felt I was treating you like stupid, but your rant really didn't include the same level of info as now, and some of us are doing serious stuff too with a different experience than yours. I'm trying to defend what is good and still very useful. I can't defend the CS4 experience, as we bailed on CS4 early in the game. Even CS3 was ifie for a while and we almost chucked the whole thing. But like you, we're stuck with all our material in CF and it looks like it'll be that way for the foreseeable future.

Still plenty of advantages there, just maybe not for your current nightmare.

[Steven A. Sandt]

I am VERY disappointed that the cavalry will not be coming to our rescue, especially since we were told over and over again that they were just around the other side of the hill. I guess the lieutenant who had been "dedicated" to working on the RTE wasn't up to the task, or maybe IT WAS impossible (given the restraints within which he had to work). In any event, I keep thinking about the line in Hamlet:"...to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...". The one bright spot for us is that CF is doing the right thing and upgrading us for free. I don't REALLY think that they had much choice. I, as one of the owners of Prospect 4K, feel like I bought a car that had no tires. The car will still run on the rims, but it will not be an enjoyable experience. The free upgrade is the good news. The bad news is, as others have already stated, that now you will have to lay out more money (and perhaps a lot more money) for the PP CS5 upgrade from Adobe (the real villain here) and for another round of the usual requisite hardware upgrades. If I had an alternative, I think I would bail out, but in my particular case I really need some of the features that CF offers. So I guess I'll just grin (like a moron) and bear it.

[Mike Harrington]

Sergio,

I'm not sure if you are aware but.....

If you install the RED importer in CS4...and edit Cineform with a RED timeline preset....
you have a dropdown window which lests you choose all the way from 1/16 to full rez...

I edit RED generated cineform 4K RAW at 1/2 rez at 24FPS with a core i7 and 12 gig, I can sometimes get 24FPS at full 4k (RAW) and most of the time I run at 1/4 rez just to make it a little snappier, the point however is you can edit cineform and cineform raw at real time on CS4 right now.

Most people do not realize this because they are waiting for the cineform presets, but the red presets work just fine for the multirez trick.
No need to offline or proxies...


even at 1/4 you should be able to edit 2k on a good laptop...on 4k half rez my i7 CPU's are only pinging up to 35%

[Simon Zimmer]

Cool!

Thanks for the tip!

I have to try that out!

Thanks for sharing!

Simon

[David Newman]

Thanks Mike. I also use CS4 as my primary NLE, and it is always real-time in the half res. mode (The Draft Quality selection in the program window,) and mostly real-time Highest Quality mode on my home 920 i7 (not a fancy desktop.) All this works without the Red importer (it seems a low res modes, but I don't need those.) This is with SI-2K footage, 2D and 3D footage, with and without First Light color corrections. Reason CS3 seemed so speedy it defaulted to half, most didn't realize or care, there were a couple of other tweaks that made PHD CS3 very fast, but only in straight lines, wasn't so great at cornering. The reason I use CS4 over CS3 (and I can easily use either) CS4 is faster at play-stop transitions, J-K-L controls work better, audio playback sync in preview better, other effects filters would play without rendering. So CS4 is not all bad. If we hadn't made CS3 so fast, we would be having this discussion now. Our CS5 implementation will be more like CS4 behavior, but with more speed.